Here Comes the Holidays!

My parents have a big lemon tree in their backyard that produces the biggest, most beautiful lemons all year long. And best of all, they are 120% organic! While their clementines are what I miss the most about California, these are hubby's favorite. In the past, we only used the juice. Even though I felt extremely wasteful and guilty to throw away those plump lemon peels, I had no other use for them.

That is until I started making the Christmas presents last year. (Yes, I realize it's a little late to be writing about what to make for Christmas gifts, but I really didn't want my friends to find out what they were getting. Doesn't everyone love surprises?! =) In 2009, when I started reading food blogs, I fell in love with the idea of home-made Christmas gifts. So I cooked and baked, and cooked and baked some more, and gave everyone a box containing jam, cupcakes, crackers, candies, cookies, etc. totalling 9 varieties! While it was enormous amount of fun, it was also exhausting, and on top of that, I had way too much sweets left in the house. (Hubby and the kids didn't complain a bit! =) So last year, I decided to make something a little simpler but just as festive - panettones. And home made candied lemon peel is the perfect way to use the peels of the last couple of lemons from my parents.

For the panettone itself, I tried a number of recipes. Some got too hard to knead that the butter and dried fruit couldn't get mixed in evenly. Some were too crumbly. My final version is built on Joy of Cooking's "No-Knead Yeast Coffee Cake or Panettone" recipe. It's not perfect, but it is very good, if I do say so myself. To make it more buttery might require more butter than I'd like to consume. =)

Panettone

1 cup of water 105 - 110 F
2 packages (1 ½ tbsp) active dry yeast
2 cup (240 g) all purpose flour
2 ½ (300 g) bread flour
½ cup butter
½ cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp salt
2 tsp lemon rind
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp candied lemon peel, cut into tiny pieces (recipe below)
1 ¼ cup mixed dry fruit (golden raisins, raisins, craisins, apricots, mangoes, etc.)

Cut up candied lemon peel, and large pieces of dried fruit such as apricots and mangoes. Set aside.

Sift together 1 cup (120 g) of all purpose flour with the bread flour. Set aside.

Mix the yeast with a generous pinch of sugar in a large bowl. Pour in the water, and let sit for 5-10 minutes.

Stir in 1 cup (120 g) all purpose flour. Cover this sponge with a towel. Let it rise in a warm place for at least 30 minutes.

In the meanwhile, beat the butter until soft in a mixer. With the mixer running, gradually add the sugar, and beat till creamy. Beat in one egg at a time. Mix in salt, lemon rind, and vanilla extract.

Beat in the sponge when ready. Add the flour in 3 batches. Starting at the lowest speed, gradually increase the speed. When mixed in well, add the next batch. Switch to the dough hook after adding the last batch of flour. Let the mixer run for at least 10 minutes after the dough is mixed well.

Mix in the dried fruit pieces. Cover with a towel, and let it rise for 2 hours.

Cut a large piece of parchment paper to build a 7" tall wall inside a 7" springform cake pan. Grease the bottom of the pan. Punch down the dough, and transfer it to the cake pan. Tuck in the all the fruit. (Exposed fruit pieces might get burned.) Cover and let it rise for 30 minutes to an hour.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Brush the top with melted butter. Bake for 55 minutes or till a skewer through the center comes out clean.

Candied Lemon Peel

2 large lemons, washed
1 cup of water
1 cup of sugar

Peel the lemons with a potato peeler to get strips of lemon peel. If there is too much pith on some of the peel, remove with a paring knife.

Blanch the peel in boiling water for about 10 minutes. Drain, and rinse.

In a small saucepan, add water and sugar. Slowly bring it to simmer, whisk frequently, so that the sugar dissolves completely, and the syrup is clear. Add the peel to the syrup, and simmer for at least an hour till the peel is translucent and tender.

Remove from the syrup and dry for a day on a wire rack set over parchment.

Add some sugar in a small bag. Add a few pieces of peel at a time. Shake to coat the peel evenly with sugar. Repeat with the rest of the peel. Add more sugar when needed.

Black Sesame Sticky Rice Balls

Oh, all that glorious sunshine, isn't it wonderful? It's no longer dark and grey at noon. Isn't it alluring? Isn't it misleading? It looks like spring is already here. But, oh wait, it's still really cold out.

I may be biased, but on a cold winter night, a bowl of Chinese black sesame sticky rice balls are the best kind of dessert. Like many Chinese/Asian desserts, it's sweet, but not tooth-achingly so. The dough is soft and chewy. When you bite in, it bursts with hot (be very careful =) sesame filling that warms you up inside and out. I often drink the broth too, even though hubby and the kids rarely do.

Chinese New Year is coming up fast. (It's February 3rd this year, in case you didn't know.) Most of Chinese holidays revolve around food, like Zongzi for the Dragon Boat Festival (Duanwu Jie), mooncakes for the Mid-Autumn Festival (Zhongqiu Jie), etc. And the sticky rice balls are for the Lantern Festival (Yuanxiao Jie). There are tiny solid ones, and bigger ones filled with a variety of fillings such as red bean paste, peanut powder mix, etc. Our favorite is black sesame.

Black Sesame Sticky Rice Balls
Makes 20

1 cup gluten rice flour (about 125g)
½ cup hot water
120g Black Sesame Filling (recipe below)

Add the flour in a medium size bowl. Add ¼ cup of water to the flour, mix with chopsticks or a spatula. When not hot to touch, knead with one hand for a minute. Add a little bit of water at a time, continue to mix and knead until all the flour is incorporated into one smooth ball. (Be careful not to add too much water, or the dough will be too sticky. It won’t affect the taste, but it’s frustrating to work with.) Separate the dough into 20 equal-size small balls.

Work with one ball at a time. Put the unused balls back in the bowl, cover with a damp towel.

Put the dough in the cup of one palm, and push up the edges with the thumb of the other hand to create half a ¾ inch diameter sphere on the bottom with ½ inch tall cylindrical walls on the sides. (Alternatively, you can roll the dough out to a 2 inch round circle. But I found the sphere-and-cylinder-shaped dough much easier for adding filling.)

Add about one tiny spoonful of filling at a time, total 6 g. Pack down the filling each time. Close the dough on top, roll it gently to a smooth ball. Repeat with the rest of the balls.

In a medium pot, bring 2 inches of water to a boil. Add the sticky rice balls. Stir once to prevent them from sticking to the bottom. After all the rice balls float, boil for another 2 minutes until the dough gets a little translucent.

Serve while hot, in a bowl with the hot water.

Black Sesame Filling
50 g sesame powder
50 g sugar
25 g fat (such as unsalted butter, or lard, or shortening)

Mix all the ingredients together.

You can use this filling for the buns too. Fill each bun with about 16 g of loosely-packed filling.

Bruuuuuuuulée

Unless you are serving soufflé or flambé, most desserts can be prepared in advance. With that said, I can't explain why I chose to make crème brulée. It just came to me as soon as I started planning. Maybe deep down, I have a fascination with torches. =)

I'm sure there are many people who love the "food scientist" Alton Brown. I'm one of you. Alton's recipes are always so straightforward. Same with this one - it completely de-mystified crème brulée. It's so simple and delicious that you will never want to pay $9 at restaurants again. Hubby isn't a big fan of caramelized sugar, so sometimes we even have the crème without the brulée. That's good eats too. =)

I forgot to take a picture. But a crème brulée is a crème brulée. They really can't look very different. If you'd like to watch how they are made, you can watch Alton doing his magic.

Crème Brulée

1 quart heavy cream
1 vanilla bean, split and scraped
1 cup vanilla sugar, divided
6 large egg yolks
2 quarts hot water

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.

Place the cream, vanilla bean and its pulp into a medium sauce pan set over medium-high heat and bring to a boil. Remove from the heat, cover and allow to sit for 15 minutes. Remove the vanilla bean and reserve for another use.

In a medium bowl, whisk together 1/2 cup sugar and the egg yolks until well blended and it just starts to lighten in color. Add the cream a little at a time, stirring continually. Pour the liquid into 6 (7 to 8-ounce) ramekins. Place the ramekins into a large cake pan or roasting pan. Pour enough hot water into the pan to come halfway up the sides of the ramekins. Bake just until the creme brulee is set, but still trembling in the center, approximately 40 to 45 minutes. Remove the ramekins from the roasting pan and refrigerate for at least 2 hours and up to 3 days.

Remove the creme brulee from the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes prior to browning the sugar on top.

Divide the remaining 1/2 cup vanilla sugar equally among the 6 dishes and spread evenly on top. Using a torch, melt the sugar and form a crispy top. Allow the creme brulee to sit for at least 5 minutes before serving.

Peach Cobbler

I do buy fruit in season. I do, I do. I just often forget what I've bought, and ending buying more. To use up the peaches and nectarines that are piling up, I decided to make this peach cobbler sans the berries. (I added 1/4 cup of crasins in their place, does that count? =)

I cut down the recipe to fit in my 8" baking pan. To make it vegan, I used margarine instead of butter, and substituted almond milk with lemon juice for buttermilk.

The result? The dough on the bottom got a little soggy, especially after a day. (This is probably because I used a baking pan, instead of a cast iron pan. If so, I have no one to blame but myself.) But the nectarines were really good. Hubby complained that the individual components didn't enhance each other as he gobbled it down. The kids loved it. D first refused it, but once he had some, he asked for seconds, then thirds. No, I didn't give him thirds.

I will definitely make this again when I have berries. =)

Tart for Tart

Just as I complained about the lack of berries, all of a sudden the markets seemed to be flooded with raspberries! They are hubby's favorite, so of course I couldn't resist but getting a few boxes. Personally, I often found raspberries a little tart. I like my fruit sweet and juicy; but that's how he likes them. However, I do have a soft spot for fruit tarts. Tart fruit is perfect for fruit tarts. =)

This time, I went with the Scintillating Strawberry Tart from Dessert Circus at Home. Instead of forming a large crust on foil, I made 8 mini-tarts. (Yes, yes, yes! I confess that I didn't make the edges like Jacques Torres demonstrated. When the tart pans are within reaching distance, I chose the easy way out.) I have tried this recipe before. What I've done differently today was to make the Pâte Brisée by hand like Torres said. It wasn't worth the effort! Use your food processor if you've got one. I also heated the apricot jam in the microwave. It didn't work as well as the stove. It might save you a minute or two, but it wasn't as smooth, and I much rather stand over a pot than getting the bowl in and out of the microwave multiple times. Now, onto the minor mistake I made. Since I didn't have any whole milk in the house, I used 2% for the pastry cream. As the result, the cream was a bit runny. It still tasted good, just missing that gelatinous look. Hey, nobody in this house noticed except me. =)

New Gadget

I'm a kitchen gadget addict. I could literally drool in front of a pretty in pink food mixer, or goo goo ga ga over a shining SodaStream penguin. My latest object of obsession is the Vitamix blender. However, the price tag is really preventing me from getting close and personal with my love. The gadget addict haven't won over the thrifty deal seeker yet. But when I find an appliance in a killer deal, the universe comes together, both parts of me are happy! That’s how I became the new proud owner of a Cuisnart Brick Oven.

I used to fret over the preheating and cooling time of my oven. Who would want to bake cookies for 15 minutes when you had to preheat for 25 minutes, and listen to the oven fan for another 15 minutes to cool down afterwards?! Not me, that's for sure! So I normally stagger my baking, and let the oven run for hours. That of course lands me in the kitchen all day. (Call me crazy.) As much as I love cooking, that's exhausting. Now, this brick oven would solve my dilemma. Preheating only takes minutes, and no oven fan. Yippy!

The Ricotta Cheesecake from Le Cordon Bleu Dessert Techniques was the lucky winner to be the first product coming out of the Cuisnart. This was really a cake, instead of a cheesecake. The flour and ground almond made the filling quite dense, but it was nonetheless a good cake. It was neither too sweet nor too heavy like many cheesecakes. For the cup of dried fruit, I used a mix of dried blueberries, crasins, mango and pineapple bits. (I was out of candied peels.) Every bite was a little surprise. Hubby was so happy with the cake, he even had seconds.

I'm already planning on all the things I could bake. I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. =)

Dueling of the Boston Cream Pies

Since I’ve been reading these vegan books, I’ve been hoping that I could make some awesome vegan cakes. (I once made blueberry muffins from Babycakes. It wasn’t bad, just didn’t live up to the hype of Babycakes.) This time I figured I’d make both the regular and vegan Boston cream pies. Let them battle it out! Who knows, maybe I could hit the jackpot and make a vegan one taste just as good.

Unfortunately, that’s just my wishful thinking. I chose the recipes from Joy of Cooking and Sinfully Vegan. I made the Joy of Cooking Boston Cream Pie with a chocolate glaze instead of icing. Regrettably, I overcooked the sugar, so the glaze was really gritty. The cake was fluffy and just the right amount of sugar. The crème patissière was this creamy custard infused with vanilla. It might not be an exceptional cake, but definitely pleasant (except for the dry glaze =P). The Sinfully Vegan version was anything but sinful. Somehow, the inside of the cake was still doughy while the outside was already getting hard. The tofu cream filling was rather bland, not worth any calories. Hubby even begged me not to try to perfect this recipe again.

The search for a truly “sinful” cake goes on.

The egg whites leftover from the Joy of Cooking version ended up as baked meringues. =)

Crêpes, Finally ...

D’s diary and egg allergies often limit my cooking decisions. True, I still make diary or egg-leaden desserts like creme brulee, panna cotta, or macarons from time to time. However, I try to make only things he can eat at each meal.

Recently I’ve reading more vegan cookbooks in hope of finding more desserts and baked goods that we could share as a family. One of them, The Joy of Vegan Baking, included a chapter on strudel, crêpes, blintzes, and pastries. I love crêpes, and used to make dessert ones filled with Nutella and banana or Crêpes Suzette. (But I have to admit that I never perfected the art of crêpe making. Mine were always a little thicker than the ones from crêperies, and not always impeccably round.) I would love for my kids to share my passion for crêpes. So upon seeing a vegan version, I knew I’d try it soon, and today was the day.

It’s a little shameful, but I have to confess that I rarely follow a recipe to the dot. I tend to improvise on whatever I miss. This one though, I tried to be as exact as possible with the only exception that the recipe called for 3/4 cup + 1 tbsp of flour, and I used 3/4 cup. Maybe because I didn’t sift the flour, or maybe because I didn’t let the batter rest, or maybe this is how the vegan version is supposed to be, but I thought the batter was thicker than the normal one, which made it a little difficult to get the batter to cover the pan when twirling the pan. But other than that, it tasted fine. I’m sure I could also work on my pan-twirling-skills. D wasn’t quite convinced that having crêpes is an enjoyment in life, but J loved it. So at least I was 50% successful, till next time. =)

My non-stick pan is about 5.5" at the bottom. I used 3 tbsp of batter per crêpe, and made 10 crêpes.

Vegan Banana Raisin Bread

D loves bananas. He has to have one everyday. When he was little, he used to throw fits because I wouldn’t give him the 2nd or 3rd banana of the day. Unfortunately, he couldn’t have most of the banana desserts like banana sundae or banana cream pie. Nevertheless, till I figure out how to make a vegan banana cream pie, he could at least have this banana raisin bread. (Oh, he loves raisins too! =)

Vegan Banana Raisin Bread
Adapted from this recipe

3 very ripe medium to large bananas or 4 small bananas
½ cup silken tofu
1 ½ cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
¾ cup raisins

For topping:
2 Tbsp. granulated sugar
1/8 tsp. ground cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 375° Fahrenheit. Butter or spray an 9x5-inch loaf pan.

Puree the bananas in the food processor. Put the banana purees in a medium mixing bowl. Puree the tofu in the food processor. Add the pureed tofu to the banana, and stir well to combine. Add the flour, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon, and vanilla, and stir to mix. Add the raisins, and stir briefly. Pour the batter into the prepared pan, and set aside.

In a small bowl, stir together the topping ingredients. Sprinkle the mixture evenly over the batter in the pan.

Bake for 35-40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Let cool in the pan on a wire rack for at least 15 minutes before serving.

Note: I often use 50/50 raisin/craisin mix. Everyone loves it!

Cherry and Blueberry Cobbler

It feels like the fall is here with the overcast and the drizzles. Time for some warm dessert, and I still had plenty of cherries left. =) So I made a cherry and blueberry cobbler based on the Blackberry Cobbler recipe from The Gourmet Cookbook by Ruth Redichl. You can substitute just about any fruit for this. Though I used shortening, the original recipe called for butter. This isn't a very photogenic dessert, but the taste more than makes up for it. Besides, doesn't it all look the same in your tummy? =)